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SERMON 

DKI.IVKHEII    BEFOBE 

HIS  EXCELLENCY  NATHANIEL  P.  BANKS, 

GOVERNOR, 

Ills    EONOR   ELIPHALET  TEASK, 

LIEUT.    GOVERNOR, 

lije  jjonorabh  Council, 

AMD 

THE    LEGISLATURE    OF    MASSACHUSETTS. 

AT   THE 

ANNUAL    ELECTION, 
WEDNESDAY,    January   2,    18G1. 


A  r  S  T  I  N     P  II  E  LPS, 

BARTLBT   PROFBSSOB    [N    INDOVBR    rHEOLOGIOAl   SKMi.viEV . 


BOS  T 0  N : 
WILLIAM  WHITE,  PRINTER  TO  THE  STATE. 

18  61. 


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%\t  relations  of  ilie  §iWe  to  the  ftil^atiott  of  the  Jfttta. 


SERMON 


DELIVERED    BEFORE 


HIS  EXCELLENCY  NATHANIEL  P.  BANKS. 

G  0  V  E  B  N  0  B  , 

I  ITS  HONOR  ELIPHALET  TRASK, 

LIEUT.    GOVERNOR, 

%\t  lononoU  (imuuil, 

AND 

THE    LEGISLATURE    OF    MASSACHUSETTS. 

AT   THE 

ANNUAL    ELECTION, 

WEDNESDAY,    January    2,    18C1. 


BY 


AUSTIN    PHELPS, 

/) 

BARTLET   PROFESSOR  IN   ANDOVER  THEOLOGICAL   SEMIXART. 


BOSTON: 

WILLIAM  WHITE,  PRINTER  TO  THE  STATE. 
1861. 


totinotttwalt!]  of  Itassacdwsetts. 


In  Senate,  January  5, 18G1. 

Ordered,  That  a  Committee  be  appointed  to  present  the  thanks  of  the  Senate  to 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Phelps  of  Andover,  for  his  very  able  and  appropriate  Sermon  preached 
before  the  Government  of  the  Commonwealth  on  "Wednesday  last,  and  to  request  a 
copy  thereof  for  the  press, 

And  Messrs.  Underwood,  Walker,  and  Hardy,  are  appointed  said  Committee. 

S.  N.  GIFFORD,  Clerk. 


CfliWMtttolijr  of  Stacjprtts. 


State  House,  Senate  Chamber,  Boston,  / 
January  7, 18G1.         J 

Rev.  Sir, — By  an  Order  unanimously  passed  on  the  5th  instant,  the  undersigned 
were  instructed  to  present  to  you  the  thanks  of  the  Senate  for  the  able  Sermon 
preached  by  you  before  the  Government  of  the  Commonwealth  on  the  2d  inst.,  and 
to  request  a  copy  of  the  same  for  the  press. 

Be  assured,  Sir,  it  affords  us  sincere  pleasui-e  to  communicate  to  you  a  tribute  so 
well  deserved,  and  we  trust  it  will  be  both  agreeable  .and  convenient  for  you  to 
furnish  to  the  Senate  a  copy  of  the  Sermon  for  the  press  as  solicited,  at  an  early  day. 

M.  S.  UNDERWOOD, 
FREEMAN  WALKER, 
ALPHEUS  HARDY, 

Committee  of  the  Senate. 
Rev.  Dr.  Austin  Phelps,  Andover,  Mass. 


Andover,  Mass.,  January,  8,  1861. 

Gentlemen, — I  have  the  honor  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  your  letter  of  yes- 
terday, communicating  to  me  the  wishes  of  the  Senate  that  a  copy  of  the  Sermon, 
which  it  was  my  privilege  recently  to  deliver  before  the  Government  of  the  Common- 
wealth, be  given  to  the  press. 

It  will  give  me  pleasure  to  comply  with  the  request,  as  soon  as  the  manuscript  can 
be  made  legible  to  the  printer. 

Please  to  accept  my  cordial  acknowledgment  of  the  courtesy  with  which  you 
have  expressed  to  me  the  vote  of  your  honorable  body,  and  believe  me  to  be, 

With  sentiments  of  high  regard, 

Your  ob't  serv't, 

AUSTIN  PHELPS. 

To  the  Hon.  M.  S.  Underwood,  Hon.  Freeman  Walker,  Hon.  Alvheus 
Hardy,  Committee  of  the  Senate  of  Massachusetts. 


Commoomtowlti  of  PassadjMtiis. 


In  Senate,  January  15,  1861. 

The  Committee  to  which  was  committed  the  Order  of  the  5th  inst.  have  attended 
to  the  duties  prescribed  in  the  Order,  and  have  received  from  the  Rev.  Dr.  Phelps  a 
manuscript  copy  of  his  Sermon  preached  before  the  Government  of  the  Common- 
wealth on  the  2d  inst.,  which  together  with  the  correspondence  is  herewith  laid  before 
the  Senate,  and  your  Committee  report  the  accompanying  Order. 

For  the  Committee, 

M.  S.  UNDERWOOD,   Chairman. 
Accepted.  S.  N.  GIFFORD,  Clerk. 


In  Senate,  January  15, 18G1. 

Ordered,  That  eight  thousand  copies  of  the  Election  Sermon  preached  by  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Austin  Phelps,  before  the  Government  of  the  Commonwealth  on  the  2d 
inst.,  be  printed  for  the  use  of  the  Legislature. 

S.  N.  GIFFORD,  Clerk. 


SERMON. 


Psalms  cxix.  99,  100. 

I  HAVE  MORE  UNDERSTANDING  THAN  ALL  MY  TEACHERS:  FOR  THY  TESTIMONIES 
ARE  MY  MEDITATION.  I  UNDERSTAND  MORE  THAN  THE  ANCIENTS,  BECAUSE  I 
KEEP  THY   PRECEPTS. 

The  custom  which  we  honor  in  the  services  of  this 
day,  has  come  clown  to  us  from  an  ancestry,  whom 
history  has  learned  to  recognize  among  the  civilizing 
powers  of  the  world.  Their  power  is,  for  the  most 
part,  latent,  like  the  forces  of  nature.  Like  those, 
also,  it  is  constructive.  It  has  been  working  now  for 
two  centuries  and  more ;  yet,  to-day,  it  is  going  on 
with  its  creations,  giving  birth  to  States,  fashioning 
institutions,  breathing  free  life  into  nations,  with 
the  same  unconsciousness  of  its  own  majesty  which 
belongs  to  gravitation. 

Like  all  such  unconscious  forces  in  the  moral  world, 
however,  it  is  not  the  power  of  the  men  who  repre- 
sented it,  but  of  certain  principles  which  were  in  the 
men.  Those  principles,  as  related  to  the  progress  of 
civilization,  may  be  reduced  to  two,  of  a  very  simple 
character.  The  one  is,  their  faith  in  the  Word  of 
God ;  the  other,  their  faitli  in  the  world's  future. 
2 


10  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

Our  Fathers  had  faith  in  the  Bible.  They  believed 
it  as  no  abstraction,  concerned  rather  with  other  worlds 
than  with  this.  They  embraced  it  as  the  most  intense 
reality  they  knew  of;  as  necessary  to  their  daily  wel- 
fare as  the  daily  sunrise.  They  grounded  their  domes- 
tic, and  literary  and  civil  institutions  upon  it,  no  less 
heartily  than  their  churches,  and  creeds,  and  pulpits. 
They  would  have  put  a  man  in  the  pillory  who  should 
have  so  insulted  their  consciences,  and  expressed  the 
degradation  of  his  own,  as  to  deny  the  obligation  of  a 
State  to  conform  to  the  same  standard  of  right  with 
that  which  should  govern  the  individual.  They  con- 
sulted the  ministers  of  religion  in  the  framing  of  their 
statutes,  at  the  very  time  when  their  care  against 
priestly  domination  was  so  vigilant,  that  they  forbade 
the  clergy  to  solemnize  the  right  of  marriage.  They 
fought  the  battles  of  the  State,  with  Bibles  in  their 
knapsacks.  They  expounded  the  institutes  of  Moses, 
and  sung  the  Psalms  of  David,  on  the  eve  of  their 
victories.  It  was  their  faith  in  the  Word  of  God 
which  moved  that  Act  of  the  American  Congress,  by 
which,  at  the  height  of  the  Eevolution,  side  by  side 
with  appropriations  for  the  purchase  of  gunpowder, 
there  stood  an  Order  for  the  importation  of  twenty 
thousand  copies  of  the  Scriptures. 

From  such  a  faith  as  this,  it  was  an  inevitable  corol- 
lary that  our  fathers  should  have  faith  also  in  the 
future  destiny  of  this  world.  Such  men  could  not 
believe  that  God  would  abandon  the  nations.     They 


TO     THE     CIVILIZATION    OF     THE     FUTURE.        11 

were  stern  predestinarians ;  but  theirs  was  faith  in  the 
predestined  triumph  of  right  over  wrong,  of  truth  over 
falsehood,  of  liberty  over  slavery,  and  of  a  Christian 
civilization,  therefore,  over  barbarism,  however  rooted 
in  history.  If  ever  men  deserved  the  title,  they  were 
Men  of  the  Future.  Their  ideas  penetrated  into 
coming  times  farther  than  they  themselves  saw.  They 
were  the  builders  of  structures,  of  which  they  were  not 
consciously  the  architects.  It  has  been  well  said  of 
them,  that  they  had  a  "  high  constructive  instinct,  rais- 
ing them  above  their  age,  and  above  themselves." 
Men  who  are  raised  above  their  age,  and  above  them- 
selves, by  whatever  power,  have  great  visions  of  truth, 
which  suggest,  when  they  do  not  reveal,  a  great  future. 
It  was  a  spiritual  inheritance  from  such  men  which 
moved  John  Adams,  in  the  Congress  of  1775,  to  say, 
"  No  assembly  ever  had  a  greater  number  of  great 
objects  before  them.  Provinces,  nations,  empires,  are 
small  things  before  us."  * 

Tracing  our  institutions  to  their  origin  in  such  an 
ancestry,  we  may  not  unfitly  regard  it  as  our  birth- 
right to  consider,  on  an  occasion  like  this : 

Some  of  the  Relations  of  the  Bible  to  the  Civilization 
of  the  Future. 

The  discussion  of  this  theme  here  must  necessarily 

be  fragmentary.     It  will  be  my  object  to  direct  your 

thoughts  to  a  few  only,  of  the  facts  in  which  lie  the 

*  Life  and  Works  of  John  Adams,  vol.  i.,  p.  170. 


12  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

germs  of  the  control  which  the  Scriptures  must  exert 
over  the  progress  of  mankind. 

I.  Of  these,  we  may  observe  in  the  first  place,  that  the 
Scriptures  contain  the  most  ancient  forms  of  truth  now 
known  to  men.  In  any  enlarged  view  of  the  forces 
which  civilize  communities,  a  place  must  be  found  for 
the  instinctive  reverence  of  the  human  mind  for  anti- 
quity. A  thing  is  presumptively  true  if  it  is  old  ; 
and  an  old  truth  men  ivill  revere.  Such  is  human 
nature.  We  all  have  historic  feelers,  which  reach  out 
into  the  past,  for  something  to  lay  hold  of,  and  to  hold 
on  by,  in  the  rush  of  things  around  us.  He  is  not  a 
bold  man,  but  a  weak  one,  rather,  who  can  tear  him- 
self absolutely  loose  from  those  roots  which  run  into 
the  under-ground  of  other  ages.  It  would  be  an 
irreparable  loss  to  the  civilizing  forces  of  Christendom, 
if  the  faith  of  the  Christian  world  could  be  destroyed 
in  the  descent  of  the  race  from  one  pair ;  so  ennobling 
and  so  stimulating  to  culture  is  this  instinct  of  rever- 
ence for  a  long-lived  unity.  Especially  is  its  power  felt 
in  the  fashioning  and  perpetuating  of  civil  and  social 
institutions.  An  institution  becomes  to  a  nation  like 
an  heirloom  to  a  family ;  the  longer  it  has  been,  the 
more  worthy  to  be  it  appears  to  the  nation's  heart. 
England,  within  a  century,  has  borne  shocks  of  her 
social  framework  which  no  other  nation  in  Europe 
could  have  survived,  in  part  because  she  has  a  thou- 
sand years  of  history. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       13 

With  all  the  abuses  to  which  this  susceptibility  of 
our  nature  is  liable,  it  is  in  our  nature,  and  for  wise 
purposes.  Within  its  normal  limits,  and  kept  in 
balance  by  the  opposite  spirit  of  inquiry,  its  operation 
is  healthful.  No  grand  elevation  of  society  is  ever 
attained  without  its  aid.  The  Bible  invites  a  large 
and  free  indulgence  of  it,  by  the  fact  that,  in  this 
volume  are  contained  the  earliest  truthful  thoughts  of 
our  race,  in  written  forms. 

To  give  defmiteness  to  this  view,  let.  several  specifi- 
cations be  observed  in  its  illustration.  It  is,  for  in- 
stance, a  fact,  the  significance  of  which  Infidelity 
appreciates,  if  we  do  not,  that  the  only  authentic  his- 
tory of  the  world  before  the  Flood,  is  found  in  the 
sacred  books  of  Christianity.  The  world  of  the  future 
never  can  know  any  thing  of  the  Antediluvians,  except 
from  the  Jewish  historian.  It  would  be  worth  centu- 
ries of  toil  to  the  socialism  of  Europe,  if  the  infidel 
science  on  which  it  is  founded  could  blot  out  this  one 
fact  in  the  relations  of  the  world  to  the  Pentateuch. 
We  have  also,  in  the  books  of  Moses, — what  no  other 
literature  can  show — one  or  two  stanzas  of  poetry, 
which  were  actually  composed  in  the  antediluvian 
infancy  of  the  race.  Does  it  not  help  us  to  some  con- 
ception of  the  venerableness  of  these  volumes,  to  recall 
that  they  were  written  eleven  hundred  years  before 
Herodotus,  whom  all  other  literature  denominates  the 
father  of  history  X  The  Hebrew  jurisprudence  is  seven 
hundred  years  older  than  that  of  Lycurgus,  and  two. 


14  THE    EELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

thousand  years  older  than  that  of  Justinian.  You 
have  heard  that  Thomas  Jefferson  was  indebted  for 
his  conception  of  our  American  Government,  to  the 
polity  of  an  obscure  Calvinistic  church  in  Virginia. 
But  Republicanism  was  foreshadowed  in  the  Hebrew 
Commonwealth,  three  thousand  years  before  the  settle- 
ment of  Jamestown. 

Dr.  Johnson  once  read  a  manuscript  copy  of  the 
book  of  Ruth,  to  a  fashionable  circle  in  London. 
They  begged  to  know  of  him,  where  he  obtained  such 
an  inimitable  pastoral.  What  would  have  been  their 
amazement,  if  he  had  concealed  the  fact  of  the  in- 
spired origin  of  the  story,  and  had  told  them  that  it 
was  an  ancient  treasure,  written  twenty-five  hundred 
years  before  the  discovery  of  America]  The  lyric 
poetry  of  the  Hebrews  was  in  its  golden  age,  nearly 
a  thousand  years  before  the  birth  of  Horace.  The 
author  of  Ecclesiastes  discussed  the  problem  of  evil, 
six  hundred  years  before  Socrates  in  the  dialogues  of 
Plato ;  and  the  epithalamium  of  the  Canticles  is  a 
thousand  years  older  than  Ovid.  The  book  of  Esther 
was  a  venerable  fragment  of  biography,  stranger  than 
fiction,  at  least  fifteen  hundred  years  old  at  the  dawn 
of  the  romance-literature  of  Europe.  The  Proverbs 
of  Solomon  are,  by  nine  hundred  years,  more  ancient 
than  the  treatises  of  Seneca.  The  entire  bulk  of  the 
prophetic  literature  of  the  Hebrews,  a  literature  ex- 
traordinary, one  which  has  laws  of  its  own,  to  which 
there  is  and  can  be  no  parallel,  in  any  uninspired 


TO     THE    CIVILIZATION     OF    THE    FUTURE.        15 

workings  of  the  human  mind  —  this  mysterious,  often 
unfathomable  compendium  of  the  world's  future,  which 
the  wisdom  of  twenty  centuries  has  not  exhausted,  was 
the  whole  of  it  anterior  to  the  Augustan  age  of  Rome ; 
and  even  the  writers  of  the  New  Testament  are,  all  of 
them,  of  more  venerable  antiquity  than  Tacitus,  and 
Plutarch,  and  Pliny  the  younger. 

And  what  shall  be  said  of  the  book  of  Job  \  Bib- 
lical scholars  can  only  conjecture  its  age ;  but  if  that 
conjecture  be  true,  this  is  the  oldest  volume  now 
existing,  at  least  a  thousand  years  older  than  Homer. 
It  was  already  an  ancient  poem  when  Cecrops  founded 
Athens.  When  Britain  was  invaded  by  the  Romans, 
it  was  more  time-worn  than  the  name  of  Julius  Ca?sar 
to-day,  is  to  us.  Natural  philosophers  now  turn  to 
its  allusions  as  the  only  recorded  evidence  we  have, 
of  the  state  of  the  arts  and  sciences  four  thousand 
years  ago.  A  living  commentator  on  the  book  has 
collated  from  it  passages  illustrative  of  the  then 
existing  state  of  knowledge,  respecting  astronomy, 
geography,  cosmology,  meteorology,  mining  operations, 
precious  stones,  coining,  writing,  engraving,  medicine, 
music,  hunting,  husbandry,  modes  of  travel,  the  mili- 
tary art  and  zoology.  Any  other  work,  surely,  which 
should  be  so  fortunate  as  to  be  of  uninspired  author- 
ity, and  should  give  to  the  world  the  obscurest  au- 
thentic hints  of  the  state  of  these  sciences  and  arts 
forty  centuries  back,  would  be  hailed  as  a  treasure 
worthy  of  a  nation's  purchase. 


16  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

But  these  vestiges  of  antiquity  are  of  little  moment, 
considered  merely  as  curiosities  of  literature.  The 
thing  which  gives  them  claim  to  notice  at  the  present 
is,  that  through  them  there  runs  a  chain  of  truth,  rep- 
resenting a  work  of  God  for  this  world's  welfare,  and 
that  this  is  the  only  thing  in  the  world's  history  which 
goes  back,  in  authentic  record,  to  the  beginning  of 
time.  Such  a  volume  must  be,  sooner  or  later,  a 
power  in  the  world's  enlightenment,  if  for  no  other 
reason,  for  the  strength  of  its  appeal  to  man's  rever- 
ence for  long-lived  truth.  Nations  cannot  forever 
throw  off  its  authority  if  they  would.  Governments 
cannot  permanently  seal  it  up,  nor  political  science 
treat  it  with  the  contempt  of  silence.  Armies  cannot 
trample  it  out  of  life  in  the  souls  of  men.  Manly 
souls  will  not  let  it  go  from  them.  It  must  be  felt 
as  one  of  the  powers  of  control  on  earth,  if  this 
clinging  of  our  nature  to  ancient  forms  of  truth  is 
designed,  in  God's  purposes,  to  hold  the  world  fast  to 
any  thing  in  the  evolution  of  its  destiny. 

II.*  The  Sovereignty  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  pro- 
gress of  mankind  is  further  suggested  by  the  fact,  that 
they  contain  the  only  development  of  Oriental  mind, 
which  can  be  an  authority  in  the  civilization  of  the 


*  In  consequence  of  the  lateness  of  the  hour  at  'which  the  services 
commenced,  this  division  of  the  Discourse,  and  several  other  paragraphs, 
were  omitted  in  the  delivery. 


TO     THE     CIVILIZATION     OF    THE    FUTURE.        17 

future.  In  an  estimate,  on  any  large  scale,  of  the  proba- 
ble advancement  of  our  race,  it  is  impossible  to  leave 
out  of  account  the  immense  masses  of  being  which  are 
congregated  in  the  East.  If  the  most  recent  reckonings 
of  the  population  of  the  globe  are  true,  considerably 
more  than  the  half  of  mankind  are  east  of  the  Med- 
iterranean. Oriental  scholars  tell  us  that  they  find 
there  a  civilization  as  complicated,  and  in  its  kind  as 
perfect,  as  that  of  the  West.  Recent  history  indi- 
cates a  probable  design  of  Providence,  to  bring  the 
two  types  of  humanity  into  contact,  it  may  be  for 
a  time  into  conflict,  with  each  other.  The  western 
mind  is  reaching  out  from  Europe  overland,  and  from 
this  continent  across  the  Pacific,  and  from  both  it  is 
peering  around  the  Capes,  to  find  out  the  resources  of 
that  Asiatic  world,  and  if  possible,  to  use  them. 
Every  thing  betokens  an  approach  of  these  ends  of 
the  earth  to  greet  each  other.  But  for  what  purpose 
is  the  greeting,  as  it  regards  that  oriental  half  of  man- 
kind! What  type  of  the  Asiatic  mind,  other  than 
that  found  in  the  Scriptures,  has  any  prospect  of 
impressing  itself  on  the  world's  future  I  What  other 
can  possibly  become  a  vitalizing  agency,  in  the  pro- 
gress of  any  thing  that  enters  into  our  ideal  of  an 
elevated  and  refined  humanity! 

It  is  a  fact  of  which  we  are  apt  to  be  oblivious,  in 
responding  to  questions  of  this  kind,  that  all  the 
ascendant  forces  working  in  modern  civilization  are 
occidental.     They  are  the  offspring,  immediately,  of  the 


18  THE    RELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

western  races,  of  western  ideals  of  taste,  of  manners, 
of  learning,    of  arts,    of  commerce,   of  government, 
and  of  religion.     The  national  temperaments  which 
they  represent,  the  histories  which  lie  back  of  them, 
and  the  languages  which   express  them,  are  all  the 
growth  of  western  climes.     The  old  fancy  that  empire 
follows  the  sun,  is  sober  truth  in  the  annals  of  civil- 
ization.     Oriental  life  has  no  perceptible  power   in 
them  as  an  authority,  in  any  other  development  than 
that  found  in  the  Scriptures.     With  the  exception,  of  a 
small  group  of  scholars  given  to   Asiatic  researches, 
the  circle  even  of  scholarly  thought,  in  our  day,  does 
not  go  back  of  the  Greek  literature  chronologically, 
nor  eastward  of  it  geographically.     The  ancient  seats 
of  power  have  no  lines  of  telegraph  connecting  them, 
in  the  conceptions  of  modern   scholarship,  with  the 
empires  of  the  West.     The  connection  exists  histori- 
cally, but  it  is  handed  over   to  antiquarians.     Who 
thinks  of  it,   often,  in  observing  the  growth  of  man- 
hood on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  %     To  whom  is  our 
derivation  from  Asiatic  progenitors   any  thing  more 
than  a  curiosity  in  ethnologic  history  1     What  is  there 
existing  in  the  oriental  forms  of  life  to  remind  us  of 
it  I     Where  are  the  powers  of  eastern  thought,  which 
are  now  creating  any  thing  that  seems  worthy  of  the 
regard  of  an  American  scholar  or  statesman  %     What 
have  we  learned  from  the  Japanese  embassy,  that  has 
seemed  worthy  to  be  engrafted  upon  American  life 
and  manners  \     Where  are  the  great  libraries  of  the 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.        19 

East  \  where  are  the  universities  ?  where  are  the  men 
of  literary  renown,  to  attract  literary  travel  beyond 
the  Bosphorus  I  Where  are  the  advanced  forms  of 
government,  the  improved  ideas  of  liberty,  the  supe- 
rior systems  of  jurisprudence,  the  more  perfect  bal- 
ancing of  the  social  forces,  which  should  lead  an 
American  senator  to  seek  out  the  wise  men  of  the 
East?  Where  is  there  any  thing  eastern,  which  is 
now  projecting  itself,  by  the  energy  of  its  own  merits, 
upon  western  civilization  \  The  truth  is,  that  a  new 
world  has  sprung  up  westward  of  the  Euphrates  and 
the  Ural  mountains,  which  is  more  than  newly  dis- 
covered continents.  Occidental  mind  is  a  novelty,  as 
related  to  the  earlier  developments  of  the  race.  It  is 
almost  as  much  isolated  from  its  oriental  progenitors, 
at  all  those  points  of  sympathy  which  form  inlets 
of  influence,  as  if  it  were  the  mind  of  another  planet. 
The  only  volume,  the  only  thing  of  elemental  energy, 
which  forms  an  isthmus  between  the  two,  on  any  large 
scale,  is  the  Christian  Scriptures.  These  have  affini- 
ties for  both.  Through  these  they  can  come  together 
in  brotherhood. 

Suspending  now,  for  a  few  moments,  the  observa- 
tion of  this  fact,  let  it  be  remarked,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  the  oriental  development  of  man,  as  a 
whole,  is  giving  no  signs  of  having  finished  its  work 
in  the  Divine  plans  respecting  the  world's  progress. 
The  oriental  races  are  not  only  the  grandest  in  respect 
of  numbers,  but  they  are  the  most  various  in  respect 


20  THE    RELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

of  character,  which  this  planet  has  yet  borne.  It  is 
not  probable  that  they  are  to  be  a  blank  in  the 
civilization  of  the  future.  Is  it  not  to  the  last  degree 
improbable,  that  imbecility  is  to  settle  henceforth 
upon  that  immense  oriental  brain  1  He  must  have 
a  singular  theory  of  the  ascendency  of  races,  who 
can  persuade  himself  that  our  culture,  so  exlusively 
occidental  as  it  is,  has  received  all  that  it  can  re- 
ceive from  that  ancient  stock.  Nothing  in  the  Divine 
methods  of  working  gives  countenance  to  such  pre- 
sumption. 

What  is  the  law  of  Providence,  respecting  nations 
and  races,  which  have  finished  their'  work  as  Powers 
in  the  world's  destiny?  It  is  the  law  of  dissolution. 
When  a  nation  has  ended  its  mission,  in  the  evo- 
lutions of  the  drama  which  Providence  is  enacting, 
that  nation  dies.  When  a  race  of  men  has  reached 
the  point  at  which  God  has  no  farther  use  for 
them,  in  the  future  moulding  of  nations,  that  race 
goes  out  of  being  as  a  visibly  distinct  stock  of  man- 
hood. It  decays  and  falls  off,  or  by  revolution  it 
is  pruned  off  from  the  trunk,  and  the  sap  of  the 
root  flows  elsewhere.  When  a  type  of  civilization 
has  grown  obsolete  in  its  relations  to  God's  plans 
for  the  future,  that  civilization  caves  in,  and  is 
swallowed  up,  and  covered  over  by  something  younger 
and  better.  God  lives — we  may  say  it  reverently — 
God  lives,  in  his  government  of  this  world,  for  the 
future,   never   for   the    past.     Paces,   nations     states, 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OP    THE    FUTURE.       21 

churches,  civil  institutions,  even  families — any  thing, 
in  short,  that  would  live — must  move  abreast  with 
Providence. 

Christianity,  which,  as  wrought  into  organic  social 
forms,  is  but  the  flower  and  the  fruitage   of  Provi- 
dence,  has    always   been    prophetic   in   its   instincts. 
It   has    always    been   animated   with   the    soul    of  a 
seer.     It    has    looked    to    coming    generations,    and 
lived  for  them.     It   has  never   bound   itself  to    the 
soil,  anywhere.     It  has  refused  to  be  hemmed  in  by 
geographical   lines.     It    calls   no   land   holy,    merely 
because  it  was  born  there.     It  has  no  such  romance 
in  its  make.     The  law  of  its  being  is,  that  it  shall 
pass    away   from    superannuated    to    youthful   races; 
from  decaying  to  germinant  nations;  from  expiring 
to  nascent  languages.     By  the  decree  of  God,  it  is 
fore-ordained  to  take  possession  always  of  the  lands 
of  promise.     Its  affinities  are  such  as  always  to  draw 
to  itself  those  elements  in  families,  in   churches,  in 
civil  institutions,    in   states,    in  nations,   in    tongues, 
in  races   of  men,  which   are   elastic  and   eager   and 
foreseeing.     Any  stock  of  humanity  which  is  so  far 
worn    out,    as   to   have    lost,   beyond    recovery,   this 
capacity  for  future  use,  Christianity  parts  with,  leaps 
away  from,  and  leaves  to  die.     It  goes  where  it  finds 
the  most   healthy,  exuberant   energy  of  production. 
Mere    susceptibility   of    being    acted    upon,    is    not 
sufficient  to    preserve    a   nation,  under  this    law    of 
Providence.       It    must    have    power    to    do,    either 


22  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

latent  or  developed,  as  well  as  to  be;  otherwise  its 
permission  to  be  is  revoked.  Nothing  in  God's  plan 
of  things  is  purely  receptive.  Every  thing  must  help 
another  thing.  Any  thing  dies  when  it  ceases  to  be 
helpful. 

Under  this  law,  the  entire  oriental  stock  of  mind, 
if  it  has  finished  its  work  in  God's  plan,  ought  now 
to  be  evincing  signs  of  dissolution.  The  oriental 
type  of  civilization  ought,  as  a  whole,  to  be  approach- 
ing its  extinction.  Yet  this  is  by  no  means  the  case 
with  it.  The  nations  which  represent  it,  as  a  whole 
are  not  dying  out.  They  are  not  visibly  approaching 
their  end.  More  than  one  of  the  Asiatic  races  seem 
to  be  yet  as  full-blooded  and  as  virile  in  their 
physical  make,  and  as  likely  to  endure  for  thirty 
generations  to  come,  as  they  did  a  thousand  years 
ago.  That  ancient  development  of  manhood, 
which  began  on  the  plains  of  Shinar,  bids  fair  to 
live,  by  the  side  of  its  occidental  rival,  even  if  it 
does  not  outlive  this,  by  reason  of  its  calmer  flow 
of  life.  If  it  does  thus  live,  all  analogy  should  lead 
us  to  believe  that  there  is  something  in  it  which 
deserves  to  live.  There  is  something  in  it  which 
Providence  has  a  use  for  in  the  future.  It  has 
energy ;  it  has  resources ;  it  has  manly  tastes  and 
proclivities ;  it  has  something  or  other,  which,  under 
divine  regeneration,  would  be,  will  be,  a  cause  of 
growth,  if  infused  into  the  life-blood  of  the  western 
races.       The   circle    of  occidental   development   may 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       23 

be  enlarged  by  it.  The  channel  in  which  our 
civilization  is  moving,  may  be  thus  widened  and 
deepened. 

Resuming   now,    the    connection    of    this  train   of 
thought  with  the  theme  more  immediately  before  us, 
let   it  be  repeated,  that  the  only  method  by  which 
the    oriental   mind   can   ever   thus   again    affect   the 
civilization  of  the  West,  is  through  the  forces  of  the 
Bible.     There  is  nothing  at  present  in  oriental  ideas 
of  art,  or  of  commerce,  or  of  government,  which  can 
ever  be  a  power,  by  the  side  of  the  laws,  the  com- 
merce, the  arts    of   western  life.     These  things,  for 
the  most  part,  we  have  to  give,  not  to  receive.     The 
oriental  power  in  the  future,  must  be  the  production 
of  the   religion   of  the   Bible,   re-established   in    its 
ancient  seats,  and  transfused    through   the  forms   of 
national  life  there.     If  new  systems  of  thought  are 
to  grow  up   among  the  Asiatics,  with  any  function 
of  control  in  the  world,  they  must  be  the  creations 
of  the  Bible.     Nothing  else  represents    the  oriental 
mind,  in  any  form  which  can  ever  rouse  it  to  its  utmost 
of  capacity.     Nothing  else,  therefore,  can  ever  enable 
it  to  become  a  power  in  the  future  civilization.     None 
but  a  visionary  can  look  for  a  rejuvenescence  of  Asia 
in  the  coming  ages,  from    any  internal   forces  now 
acting  there,  independently  of  the   Scriptures.     The 
history  of  the  East  contains  nothing  which  can  ever 
be   to    the   world,  what  the  revived    civilizations   of 


24  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

Greece  and  Eome  were  to  the  middle  ages  of  Europe. 
Whatever  that  immense  territory  has  to  contribute 
to  the  civilization  of  the  future,  must  come  as  the 
illustration  of  scriptural  modes  of  thought,  and  as 
the  fruit  of  scriptural  ideas  of  truth. 

Is  it  visionary  to  look  for  this,  as  one  of  the  results 
of  the  infusion  of  European  mind,  now  going  on, 
in  western  and  central  Asia]  What,  indeed,  may 
not  be  hoped  for  from  the  contact  of  western  with 
eastern  thought,  pioneered  as  the  western  mind  is 
by  Christian  missionaries,  and  pervaded  as  it  is 
so  largely  by  Christian  ideas  of  life  \  What  a  differ- 
ence would  have  been  created  in  the  destinies  of 
Europe,  what  centuries  of  barbarism  and  conflict, 
to  human  view  would  have  been  saved,  if  all  that 
was  good  in  the  civilizations  of  Greece  and  Home 
could  have  dawned  upon  the  European  mind,  in 
Christian,  rather  than  in  pagan  forms !  Yet  this,  to 
a  very  large  extent,  appears  likely  to  be  the  process 
of  intellectual  and  moral  and  social  awakening,  to 
which  the  vast  resources  of  the  Asiatic  mind  are  to 
be  subjected. 

Napoleon  used  to  say  that  the  only  theatre  fit  for 
great  exploits  was  the  East.  Europe,  he  said,  was 
contracted.  It  was  provincial.  The  great  races  were 
beyond  the  Mediterranean.  They  were  in  the  ancient 
seats  of  empire,  because  the  numbers  were  there. 
There    may    be    more    of    truth   in    this    than    he 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OP    THE    FUTURE.       25 

meant  to  utter.  The  grandest  intellectual  and  moral 
conquests  of  the  world  may  yet  follow  the  track  of 
Alexander. 

« 

III.  Passing  now  from  the  oriental  world,  we  may 
observe  a  further  source  of  the  ascendancy  of  the 
Bible  in  the  institutions  of  the  future,  in  the  fact  that 
it  is  already  wrought  into  all  the  dominant  forces 
of  the  civilization  of  the  West.  Not  that  it  is  in 
them  all  with  equal  efficiency,  but  in  all  of  them  in 
such  degree  as  to  make  itself  obvious.  When  we 
speak  of  the  sway  of  European  and  American  mind, 
we  speak  the  conquests  of  the  Scriptures.  The  ele- 
mental ideas  of  the  Bible  lie  at  the  foundation  of  the 
whole  of  it.  Christianity  has  wrought  such  revolu- 
tions of  opinion ;  it  has  thrown  into  the  world  so 
much  of  original  thought ;  it  has  organized  so  many 
institutions,  customs,  unwritten  laws  of  life;  it  has 
leavened  society  with  such  a  powerful  antiseptic  to 
the  putrescent  elements  of  depravity ;  and  it  has, 
therefore,  positively  created  so  much  of  the  best 
material  of  humanity,  that  now  the  noblest  type  of 
civilization  cannot  be  conceived  of  otherwise  than 
as  a  debtor  to  the  Christian  Scriptures. 

This  obligation  becomes  most  obvious  in  our  mod- 
ern literature ;  because  there  the  ideas  which  are 
creative  in  our  civilization  take  on  forms  of  speech. 
The  debt  of  literature  to  the  Bible  is  like  the  debt  of 
vegetation  to  Light.    No  other  volume  has  contributed 


26  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

so  much  to  the  great  organic  forms  of  thought.  No 
other  is  fusing  itself  so  widely  into  the  standards  of 
libraries.  Homer,  and  Plato,  and  Aristotle  long  since 
gave  place  to  it  as  an  intellectual  power.  This 
volume  has  never  yet,  at  any  one  time,  numbered 
among  its  believers  a  fourth  part  of  the  human  race  ; 
yet  it  has  swayed  a  greater  amount  of  mind,  than  any 
other  volume  the  world  has  known.  It  has  the 
singular  faculty  of  attracting  to  itself  the  thinkers 
of  the  world,  either  as  friends  or  as  opponents, 
always,  everywhere.  The  works  of  comment  upon  it, 
of  themselves,  form  a  literature  of  which  any  nation 
might  be  proud.  It  is  more  voluminous  than  all  that 
remains  to  us  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  literatures 
combined.  An  English  antiquarian,  who  has  had  the 
curiosity  to  number  the  existing  commentaries  upon 
the  Scriptures,  or  upon  portions  of  them,  found  the 
number  to  exceed  sixty  thousand.  Where  is  another 
empire  of  mind  to  be  found  like  this  ?  Here  is  a 
power  which,  say  what  we  may  of  its  results,  has 
set  the  Christian  world  to  thinking,  and  kept  it  think- 
ing for  nearly  two  thousand  years.  The  unpublished 
literature  of  the  Christian  pulpit  surpasses  in  volume 
all  the  libraries  of  all  the  nations.  "If  the  sermons 
preached  in  our  land,  during  a  single  year,  were  all 
printed,"  says  a  living  scholar,  "they  would  fill  a 
hundred  and  twenty  million  octavo  pages.  Many  of 
these  sermons  are,  indeed,  specimens  of  human  weak- 
ness; but  the  frailest  vase  may  hold  roots  that  will 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       27 

far  outgrow  its  own  dimensions."*  The  Bible  is  read 
to-day  by  a  larger  number  of  educated  minds  than  any 
other  book.  Innumerable  multitudes  are  poring  over 
its  pages,  and  are  feeling  its  elevating,  refining  influ- 
ence, who  never  think  of  it  otherwise  than  as  the 
authority  of  their  religious  faith. f  Harvard  College, 
at  a  time  when  the  material  civilization  of  Massachu- 
setts was  so  meagre,  that  a  pewter  flagon  and  a  bushel 
of  corn  were  received  gratefully  as  a  contribution  to 
the  collegiate  funds,  was  founded  by  men,  some  of 
whom  could  regale  themselves  in  their  hours  of  lei- 
sure, by  conversing  in  the  original  language  of  the 
Old  Testament.  Our  own  language  owes,  in  part,  the 
very  structure  it  has  received  to  influences  exerted 
upon  it  by  our  English  Bible.  No  Englishman  or 
American  knows  well  his  mother  tongue,  till  he  has 
learned  it  in  the  vocabulary  and  the  idioms  of  "  King 
James's  Translation."  In  English  form,  the  Bible 
stands  at  the  head  of  the  streams  of  English  con- 
quests; and  of  English  and  American  colonization 
and  commerce.     It  must  control,  in  large  degree,  the 

*  Prof.  E.  A.  Park's  Election  Sermon,  1851,  page  12. 

J  "The  number  of  English  Bibles  and  New  Testaments,  separately, 
which  have  passed  through  the  press,  within  the  recollection  of  many  now 
living,  has  exceeded  the  number  of  souls  in  Britain.  In  the  space  of 
twelve  months,  the  press  has  sent  forth  more  than  a  million  of  copies,  or, 
say  above  nineteen  thousand  every  week,  above  three  thousand  every 
day,  three  hundred  every  hour,  or  five  every  minute  of  working  time." — 
Anderson's  Aunals  of  the  English  Bible,  vol.  i.,  Preface,  page  8. 


28  THE    EELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

institutions  which  are  to  spring  up   on  the  banks  of 
those  streams,  the  world  over. 

It  is  interesting  to  observe  how  the  influence  of  the 
Bible  trickles  down  into  crevices  in  all  other  litera- 
ture, and  shows  itself  at  length  in  golden  veins,  and 
precious  gems  of  thought,  which  are  the  admiration  of 
all  observers,  but  for  which  He  who  made  them 
often  receives  no  thanksgiving.*  Shakspeare's  con- 
ception of  woman  has  been  applauded  as  an  ab- 
solute original,  the  creation  of  no  other  genius 
than  his.  This  is  not  so ;  it  is  only  a  portraiture, 
in  poetic  forms,  of  the  Christian  ideal  of  woman, 
which  suffuses  with  refinement  so  much  of  our 
modern  life,  and  which  we  owe  ultimately  to  the 
scriptural  doctrine  of  the  atonement.  The  psalmody 
of  the  Scriptures  has  wrought  mightily  in  the  birth- 
night  of  more  than  one  revolution  for  the  sake  of 
liberty.  The  old  English  and  Scottish  ballads  never 
exerted  on  the  national  mind  a  tithe  of  the  influence 
of  the  Hebrew  Psalm.  The  Commonwealth  of  Eng- 
land owed  its  existence,  in  part,  to  the  psalm-singing 

*  The  late  Prof.  B.  B.  Edwards,  in  his  admirable  Essay  on  the  Hebrew 
Poetry,  observes  :  "  It  supplies  the  seeds  of  thought,  the  suggestive  hints, 
the  little  germs,  the  dim  conceptions,  the  outlines  of  some  of  the  sublimest 
poems,  or  passages  of  poems,  to  be  found  in  modern  literature.  It  is  easy 
to  perceive  the  influence  of  the  Scriptures  on  the  imagination  of  Spenser. 
The  Messiah  of  Pope  is  only  a  paraphrase  of  some  passages  in  Isaiah. 
The  highest  strains  of  Cowper,  in  his  Task,  are  but  an  expansion  of  a 
chapter  of  the  same  prophet.  In  the  Thanatopsis  of  Bryant,  [certain] 
lines  remind  us  at  once  of  the  words  of  Job.  Lord  Byron's  celebrated 
Poem  on  Darkness  was  evidently  founded  on  a  passage  in  Jeremiah." — 
Writings,  vol.  ii.,  pages  389,  390. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       29 

of  Cromwell's  armies.  On  the  continent  of  Europe, 
also,  the  whole  bulk  of  the  despotism  of  the  middle 
ages  went  down,  for  a  time,  before  the  rude  imitations 
of  the  Hebrew  psalmody,  which  were  sung  in  thou- 
sands by  the  people  of  Germany.  The  battle-song  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus  was  originally  published  with 
this  title :  "  A  heart-cheering  song  of  comfort,  on  the 
watchword  of  the  Evangelical  Army  in  the  battle  of 
Leipsic,  September  7,  1631,  '  God  with  us.'" 

"Who  shall  worthily  portray  the  obligations  of 
American  freedom  to  the  Word  of  God  1  Sir  James 
Mackintosh  says  that  the  "  Independent  divines  " — 
(and  it  was  from  them  that  the  clergy  of  New  Eng- 
land were  culled) — first  taught  to  John  Locke  "  those 
principles  of  religious  liberty  which  they  were  the 
first  to  disclose  to  the  world."  *  But  why  should  the 
Independent  divines  have  been  the  pioneers  of  such 
discovery  1  "  Democracy  is  Christ's  Government,"  was 
the  theme  of  a  pamphlet  by  an  humble  pastor  of 
Massachusetts,  in  1687,  which  nearly  a  hundred  years 
later,  on  the  eve  of  our  Revolution,  was  re-published 
as  a  political  document  becoming  to  the  times.f 

*  Mackintosh's  Miscellaneous  Works,  Second  Edition.  London.  Page 
152.  In  a  note  upon  Orme's  Memoirs  of  Dr.  Owen,  he  adds :  "  In  this 
very  able  volume  it  is  clearly  proved  that  the  Independents  were  the  first 
teachers  of  religious  liberty.  .  .  .  It  is  an  important  fact  in  the  his- 
tory of  toleration,  that  Dr.  Owen,  the  Independent,  was  Dean  of  Christ 
church  in  1G31,  when  Locke  was  admitted  a  member  of  that  College, 
'  under  a  fanatical  tutor,'  as  Antony  W^ood  says." 

t  Thornton's  "  Pulpit  of  the  American  Revolution."  Introduction, 
page  29. 


30  THE    RELATIONS    OP    THE    BIBLE 

On  a  Sabbatli  morning,  the  8th  of  June,  1766, 
when  the  old  Charter  of  Massachusetts  was  in  peril, 
Jonathan  Mayhew,  pastor  of  the  West  Church,  in 
Boston,  hallowed  his  last  day  of  health  in  this  city,  by 
writing  to  James  Otis :  "  You  have  heard  of  the  com- 
munion   of    churches "While   I   was 

thinking  of  this  in  my  bed,  the  great  use  and  impor- 
tance of  a  communion  of  colonies  appeared  to  me 
in  a  strong  light,  which  led  me  immediately  to  set 
down  these  hints  to  transmit  to  you."*  That  was 
the  germ  from  which  sprung  the  Union  of  these 
States.  But  where  did  Jonathan  Mayhew  find  the 
idea  of  the  communion  of  churches'?  He  found  it 
where  he  found  the  other  great  thoughts  which 
inspired  his  love  of  liberty.  In  a  sermon  preached 
to  his  people  on  the  occasion  of  the  repeal  of  the 
Stamp  Act,  he  said :  "  Having  learned  from  the  Holy 
Scriptures   that   wise,   and  brave,   and  virtuous  men 

are    always    friends    to    liberty, and 

that  where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  lib- 
erty ;  this  made  me  conclude  that  freedom  is  a  great 
blessing."  -f* 

Eloquent  defenders  of  liberty  in  parliament  and 
senate  have  echoed  the  voice  of  this  patriotic  pastor, 
by  their  own  indebtedness  to  the  same  fountain  of 
freedom   and   free   speech.      The   Earl   of   Chatham 

*  Bradford's  Life  of  Mayhew.     Pages  428,  429. 

f  "  The  Snare  Broken." — A  Thanksgiving  Discourse,  by  Dr.  Mayhew, 
preached  May  23,  1766.     Page  43. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.        31 

acknowledged  that  he  owed  much  of  his  power  in 
parliamentary  debate  to  the  Apostle  Paul.  Patrick 
Henry  and  James  Otis  were  often  likened  in  their 
day  to  the  Hebrew  prophets.  Lord  Brougham  and 
Daniel  "Webster  have  both  expressed  their  sense  of 
obligation  to  the  same  models.  Webster  was  for 
years  the  concordance  of  the  Senate  of  the  United 
States.  It  is  said,  that  some  of  his  ablest  opponents 
have  been  known  to  seek  the  aid  of  his  memory,  to 
furnish  them  with  biblical  references,  with  which  to 
condense  and  point  their  own  speeches  against  him. 
Yet,  such  was  his  affluence  in  command  of  the  same 
resources,  that  he  could  afford  to  give  them  liberally, 
and  without  upbraiding. 

To  all  departments  of  modern  thought,  the  Scrip- 
tures have  been  what  they  have  been  to  modern  art. 
It  has  been  said,  that  the  single  conception  of  the 
Virgin  and  her  Child  has  achieved  more  for  the  eleva- 
tion of  art  than  all  the  exhumed  models  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  It  is  a  well  known  fact,  that  nothing  in  art 
itself  succeeded  in  crushing  out  the  moral  abomina- 
tions which  many  of  those  models  expressed,  until  the 
Christian  religion  flooded  the  realm  of  beauty  with 
more  intense  ideas  of  life ;  so  that  to  the  purest  taste, 
the  Greek  Venus  has  become  imbecile  by  the  side  of 
the  Christian  Madonna.  So-  is  the  Bible  dropping 
everywhere  its  germs  of  refinement  in  modern  civ- 
ilization, beyond  the  depth  of  Greek  and  Roman 
thought  in  its  choicest  and  most  durable  forms. 


32  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

I  would  not  weary  you  with  an  enumeration  of 
examples  of  a  truth  so  obvious,  but  it  is  illustrated 
with  singular  vividness  in  one  phenomenon  of  our  age, 
which  you  will  permit  me  to  notice.  I  allude  to  the 
unconscious  debt  of  infidelity  to  biblical  resources.  The 
energy  of  a  moral  power  is  often  seen  most  impres- 
sively in  the  disasters  which  attend  its  perversions. 
So  the  power  with  which  the  Scriptures  are  working 
in  modern  mind,  is  disclosed  in  the  vigor  of  our  infidel 
literature.  That  literature  owes  nearly  all  the  vitality 
it  has,  to  its  pilferings  of  Christian  nutriment.  Its 
very  life-blood  comes  by  unconscious  suction  from 
Christian  fountains.  The  Pilgrim's  Progress  and  the 
Paradise  Lost,  are  not  more  palpably  indebted  to  the 
Bible,  than  are  many  of  the  most  thrilling  conceptions 
in  anti-christian  productions  of  our  times.  The  most 
popular  and  effective  of  them  no  man  could  have 
written,  whose  genius  had  not  beeen  developed  by 
Christianity.  No  man  would  have  written  them,  whose 
infidelity  had  not  been  fired  by  collision  with  the 
epistle  to  the  Romans.  Atheism,  as  is  well  known, 
is  now  working  disastrously  among  the  artisan  classes 
of  Great  Britain.  But  it  owes  the  chief  sources  of  its 
power  over  the  popular  mind,  to  the  fact  that  it  holds 
on  to  so  much  of  scriptural  thought,  though  strug- 
gling to  enforce  it  without  a  scriptural  God.  Its 
capital  ideas  are  biblical  ideas.  Strip  it  of  these,  and 
it  would  have  no  more  chance  of  a  hearing  in  the 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.        33 

workshops  of  Birmingham  and  Manchester,  than  the 
vagaries  of  Buddhism* 

Similar  to  this  is  the  chief  lesson,  which,  in  my 
view,  we  have  to  learn  from  the  life  of  that  misguided 
mind,  which,  for  the  last  twenty  years,  has  been  the 
prophet  of  infidelity  in  this  city.  I  use  the  term 
" infidelity"  here,  not  opprobriously,  but  as  expressing 
by  common  consent  the  system  of  opinions  which  he 
held  honestly,  and  which  he  was  too  manly  to  conceal. 
He  brought  to  that  solitary  altar  at  which  he  minis- 
tered, a  scholarship  more  generous,  and  a  genius  more 
mercurial,  a  power  of  thought  more  versatile,  and  a 
command  of  speech  more  fascinating, — taking  him  all 
in  all,  a  character  more  earnest,  and  a  life  more  pure, 
than  any  other  of  our  countrymen  has  ever  arrayed 
against  those  views  of  truth  which  he  was  wont  to 
designate  as  the  "  popular  theology."  For  one,  I 
must  concede  the  vigor  of  his  influence.  With  all 
the  evidences  which  were  apparent,  that  its  acme  had 

*  On  this  topic  the  learned  author  of  "  The  Natural  History  of  Enthu- 
siasm," remarks  as  follows  :  "  The  disbelief  of  these  last  days,  so  far  as  it 
is  a  scheme  of  doctrine,  may  be  shown  to  be  a  birth  of  Christian  doctrine. 
The  Atheism  partly,  and  the  Theism  entirely,  of  the  present  time  is  a 
heresy  full  of  Christian  sap.  By  calling  it  Christian,  I  mean  that  it  has  no 
meaning  at  all,  except  that  which  it  has  wrung  from  elements  of  Christian 
belief,  brought  into  collision  one  with  another.  Atheism,  in  these  days,  is 
not  as  of  old,  a  metaphysic  abstraction,  or  a  cold  paradox;  but  it  is  a 
living  creature,  speaking  with  a  loud  voice,  and  showing  a  ruddy  cheek, 
because  it  has  drawn  life-blood  from  that  which  can  spare  much  and  yet 
live.  If  the  Gospel,  the  destruction  of  which  is  so  eagerly  desired  by 
some  among  us,  were  actually  to  breathe  its  last,  not  one  of  the  schemes  of 
doctrine  which  is  now  offered  to  us  in  its  ^tead  would  thenceforward  draw 
another  breath." — The  Restoration  of  Belief,  page  215. 
5 


34  THE    RELATIONS    OP    THE    BIBLE 

been  reached,  and  its  decline  had  commenced,  during 
the  last  years  of  his  life,  I  am  compelled  to  believe 
that  no  candid  man  among  his  opponents,  who  knows 
the  classes  of  mind  which  have  been  addressed,  and 
the  energy  with  which  they  have  been  moved,  in 
yonder  Music  Hall,  will  feel  that,  as  a  friend  of  truth, 
he  can  afford  to  ignore  that  influence,  or  to  underrate 
it.  We  have  not  yet  seen  the  end  of  it.  The  man 
has  gone;  but  he  represented,  and  his  name  still 
represents,  opinions  which  are  a  power  in  the  conflict 
of  ideas  among  us.  Yet  his  power  was  not  the  power 
of  his  infidelity.  It  was  the  power  of  his  unconscious 
obligations  to  the  very  truth  which  he  discarded.  His 
great  ideas,  those  by  which  he  roused  the  popular  con- 
science, and  often  swayed  the  popular  heart,  were 
Christian  ideas.  He  owed  them  to  the  Bible,  which, 
as  an  authority,  he  disowned.  He  derived  them  from 
all  the  living  literatures  which  he  mastered,  and  from 
which  he  could  not  help  imbibing  streams  of  Christian 
thought.  He  absorbed  them  from  the  very  atmos- 
phere, which  is  electric  with  our  biblical  civilization. 
The  workings  of  his  mind  were  in  part  like  respira- 
tion, in  which  a  man  inhales  the  pure  air  which  God 
made  for  his  sustenance,  and  exhales  mephitic  vapors. 
Many  of  us,  I  may  say  with  no  invidious  intent  the 
majority  of  us,  have  been  compelled  to  feel  that  he 
maligned  our  religion ;  he  ridiculed  our  sacred  oracles ; 
he  denounced  our  hope  of  heaven ;  he  scoffed  at  our 
Redeemer;  he  uttered  language,  which,  from  our  lips, 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    T II E    FUTURE.       35 

would  be  blasphemy  against  our  God.  Yet,  the  inter- 
nal forces  which  bore  up,  as  on  a  ground  swell,  this 
nameless  craft  so  revolting  to  our  view,  and  propelled 
it  often  at  the  top  of  the  wave  in  the  popular  vision, 
were  forces,  every  one  of  which  sprung  from  that 
ocean  of  inspired  thought,  whose  great  deeps  were 
broken  up  in  the  civilization  and  the  literature  around 
him.  His  idea  of  the  dignity  of  manhood,  of  the 
singleness  of  individual  being,  of  the  brotherhood  of 
the  race,  of  the  intensity  of  life  under  the  shadow  of 
immortality,  of  the  paternity  and  the  love  of  God,  of 
the  right  of  free  inquiry,  of  the  despicablcness  of 
cant  in  every  form,  and  the  ideas  of  social  and  of 
political,  and  of  moral  reform,  which  grew  out  of  these 
as  corollaries  —  such  were  the  elements  of  his  strength. 
For  the  right  to  wield  them,  he  stood  up  as  a  free 
man,  with  a  free  tongue,  and  for  this  we  honor  him. 
Yet,  for  every  one  of  these  ideas  we  hold  him  as 
a  debtor  to  the  old  Scriptural  Theology  of  New 
England. 

Thus  it  is  with  every  development  of  infidelity, 
which  has  force  enough  of  character  to  render  it 
respectable.  It  feeds  on  Christianity  itself,  and  grows 
lusty  therefore.  Christian  thought  comes  into  this 
world,  and  goes  through  it,  like  an  immense  projec- 
tile. It  creates,  in  the  surrounding  atmosphere  on 
either  side,  currents  which  are  no  part  of  it.  Yet 
they  imitate  its  magnitude  ;  they  border  on  its  track  ; 
they  catch  the  rate  of  its  momentum,  and   so  keep 


36  THE    RELATIONS    OP    THE    BIBLE 

pace  with  it  in  speed,  like  the  wind  of  a  cannon  ball. 
Hence  it  is  that  infidelity  appears  often  to  grow  in  the 
intensity  of  its  spirit.  Hence  it  seems  often  to  accu- 
mulate resources  of  destructiveness.  Each  new  phase 
of  it  seems  more  formidable  than  the  last.  It  is 
because  the  scriptural  standards  of  thought  are  work- 
ing their  way  deeper  into  the  convictions  of  men,  and 
are  spreading  wide  their  influence,  and  are  hastening 
to  their  results  in  perfected  forms  of  civilization. 
The  whole  being  of  a  Christian  nation  is  thus  in- 
tensified. The  Bible,  like  the  sun,  thus  shines  on  the 
evil  and  on  the  good.  It  fertilizes  the  soil  of  infidel 
opinions  ;  and  these,  in  turn,  fling  up  in  defiance  of  it 
a  portion  of  the  fruits  of  its  own  vitality. 

IV.  Some  of  the  views  thus  far  presented  involve 
another  fact,  indicative  of  the  ascendancy  of  the  Bible 
in  the  future  progress  of  the  race.  It  is,  that  the 
Bible  discloses  the  only  groundwork  and  process  of 
a  perfect  civilization,  as  a  practicable  result. 

A  scheme  of  social  advancement,  as  such,  the  Bible 
does  not  delineate.  The  word  '  civilization '  does  not 
once  occur  in  it.  The  things  in  which  an  elevated 
social  economy  reveals  itself  to  political  wisdom,  are 
not  at  all  obtrusive  upon  the  foreground  of  scriptural 
thought.  Wealth,  arts,  literature,  science,  urbanity 
of  manners,  domestic  comfort,  institutions  of  charity, 
free  governments,  —  these  are  not  the  salient  themes 
here,  either  of  argument  or  of  promise.     A  reformer 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.        37 

might  study  pages  of  this  volume,  covering  a  thousand 
years  of  history,  and  not  discover  that  inspired  minds 
ever  thought  of  any  such  sort  of  thing;  yet  a  wise 
man,  instructed  in  God's  wisdom,  may  traverse  the 
same  ground  and  so  discern  the  gravitating  of  princi- 
ples towards  social  results,  as  almost  to  imagine  that 
inspired  minds  thought  of  nothing  else. 

The  idea,  out  of  which  the  future  civilization  must 
grow,  is  here,  there,  everywhere  in  this  Book  of  Life. 
You  anticipate  me  in  affirming  that  that  idea  is,  the 
moral  regeneration  of  the  individual.  In  this  one  aim 
lies  the  rudiment  of  all  that  is  practicable  for  the 
amelioration  of  the  race.  This  is  the  germ  of  the 
whole  tree.  The  wisdom  of  God  is  to  begin  at  the 
beginning.  The  wise  master-builder  starts  at  the 
foundation,  and  builds  up.  The  pulpit,  especially  in 
its  friction  against  more  flimsy  engines  of  reform,  has 
made  this  idea  familiar  to  us  all.  Let  us  therefore 
more  summarily  than  would  be  otherwise  desirable, 
observe  the  method  by  which  Christianity  works  as 
an  organ  of  political  and  social  movement. 

In  the  first  place,  it  exalts  spiritual  over  material 
forces.  It  aims  at  souls,  rather  than  bodies.  "  Mine 
is  a  kingdom,"  it  says,  "  which  is  not  of  this  world." 
Steam,  railways,  telegraphs,  ships,  cotton  gins,  spin- 
ning-jennies, printing  presses,  and  the  like,  are  not  in 
the  Christian  theory  the  elemental  civilizing  powers. 
They  are  effects  and  incidents.  The  powers  which  lie 
back  of  them  are  ideas.     They  lay  hold  of  the  only 


38  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE     BIBLE 

thing  on  this  earth  which  is  immortal.  The  stir  of 
physical  forces  is  only  the  fermentation  incident  to  the 
working  of  ideas  in  a  world  of  sense.  The  material 
creation  groans  and  travails,  because  it  is  put  to  great 
uses  in  expressing  the  throes  of  the  spirit  which  is  its 
lord.  In  such  a  system  of  things,  cotton  is  not  king, 
and  corn  is  not  king,  and  gold  is  not  king ;  thought 
is  king,  mind  is  king,  character  is  king. 

Working  thus  with  spiritual  forces,  Christianity 
intensifies  individual  being.  It  deals  not  with  human- 
ity but  with  men,  and  takes  them  as  they  are.  It  sets 
the  individual  man  to  searching  after  God.  It  stimu- 
lates the  sense  of  individual  responsibility  to  a  personal 
Deity.  It  evokes  the  consciousness  of  individual  sin. 
It  makes  a  man  feel  the  infinite  solitude  of  guilt,  as  if 
there  were  no  other  beings  in  the  universe  but  himself 
and  God.  To  that  only  Friend  it  directs  his  cry  for 
help,  as  to  One  who  is  not  shocked  nor  disgusted  by 
his  vileness,  but  who  can  be  touched  with  the  feeling 
of  his  infirmities,  and  who  is  ever  saying  to  him, 
"  Come  unto  me,  my  child."  It  reveals  the  practica- 
bility of  individual  regeneration  by  God  only,  through 
individual  faith  in  Christ,  expanding  and  blooming 
into  the  graces  of  a  Christlike  character. 

Intensifying  thus  the  individuality  of  the  soul, 
Christianity  presumes  the  whole  process  to  be,  as  in 
experience  it  proves  itself  to  be,  a  process  of  symmet- 
rical elevation.  An  uplifting  of  the  entire  being  is 
the  result.     Affinities  spring  into  life  with  all  that  is 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.        39 

lovely  and  of  good  report.  Aspirations  after  growth 
in  every  thing  that  may  dignify  a  man,  come  by  a  law 
as  sure  as  that  by  which  respiration  comes  to  the 
newly  born.  Advance  becomes  a  necessity.  Heavenly 
voices  speak,  saying,  "  Come  up  hither ;  forget  the 
things  which  are  behind  thee ;  thine  is  a  high  calling." 

Lifting  thus  the  individual  mind,  Christianity  sets 
to  working  a  power  which  is  diffusive.  The  man  is  a  part 
of  humanity :  he  begins  to  move  it,  as  he  himself  is 
moved.  The  individual  is  an  elevating  force  to  the 
family,  and  through  the  family  to  the  community,  and 
through  the  community  to  the  state,  and  through  the 
state  to  the  age,  and  the  race.  Christianity  presup- 
poses what  history  proves,  that  individual  consciences, 
thus  illumined,  intensified,  redeemed  from  the  domin- 
ion of  guilt,  will  sway  the  world.  Dotting  the  globe 
over  with  points  of  light,  they  radiate  towards  each 
other;  each  reduplicates  the  illuminating  power  of 
another.  They  run  together,  sometimes  by  imper- 
ceptible advances,  like  the  movement  of  the  fixed 
stars ;  yet  in  golden  moments  of  history,  times  of  re- 
freshing to  an  expectant  and  weary  world,  they  are 
like  material  light,  the  swiftest  of  the  elements. 

Diffusing  itself  thus,  as  a  power  of  moral  illumina- 
tion, Christianity  is  affluent  in  the  production  of  certain 
auxiliary  ideas.  These  like  itself,  are  spiritual,  and 
they  take  on  social,  and  civil,  and  political  forms. 
They  are  constructive  ideas.  They  work  in  building 
institutions,   customs,  forms  and  reforms  of  govern- 


40  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

ment,  much  as  the  instinct  in  a  bee-hive  works.  From 
the  intensity  which  the  Christian  theory  of  manhood 
gives  to  individual  being,  start  forth  as  collaterals, 
such  ideas  as  the  equality  of  the  race,  the  brotherhood 
of  man  with  man,  the  nobility  of  woman,  the  inhu- 
manity of  war,  the  odiousness  of  slavery,  the  dignity 
of  labor,  the  worth  of  education,  and  the  blessedness 
of  charity.  Institutions  which  are  the  consolidation 
of  such  ideas,  Christianity  drops  from  her  open  hand, 
in  and  around  the  homes  of  men,  for  the  healing 
of  the  nations.  And  the  point  of  significance  is 
that  the  nations  never  get  them  from  any  other 
source. 

I  have  said,  that  civilization  as  a  scheme  of  social 
progress  is  not  expressed  in  the  Bible.  Yet,  once 
more,  be  it  observed,  that  while  throwing  out  into  the 
world  these  ideas  which  are  auxiliary  to  its  direct  aim, 
the  Bible  does  exhibit,  if  I  may  so  speak,  a  certain 
divine  consciousness,  that  they  mast  and  will,  and  a 
purpose  that  they  shall,  become  constructive  elements  in 
society.  This  is  exhibited,  for  instance,  in  that  most 
luminous  fact  in  scriptural  history,  that  God  educates 
nations  as  the  representatives  of  principles.  No 
thinking  man  can  review  the  four  thousand  years 
of  history,  covered  by  the  Old  Testament,  without 
discerning  that  nations  are  servitors  of  God's  pur- 
poses, arranged  along  a  line  of  advance  in  the  devel- 
opment of  a  plan.  They  are  like  a  cordon  of  military 
posts  along  a  king's  highway. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OP    THE    FUTURE.       41 

Equally  obvious  is  this  breadth  of  providential 
design,  in  the  scriptural  fact  that  God  destroys 
some  nations  to  make  way  for  the  establishment  of 
truth  in  others.  The  biblical  interpretation  of  the 
history  of  such  empires  as  those  of  Babylon  and 
Egypt,  is  simply  this ;  that  when  a  nation  plants 
itself  in  the  way  of  a  plan  of  God  for  the  progress  of 
the  race,  Divine  Providence  waits  with  long-suffering, 
while  the  pride  and  pomp  and  circumstance  of  na- 
tional impiety  accumulate,  but  at  the  same  time  gathers 
alongside  of  these  the  materials  of  retribution, 
and  at  last,  with  an  awful  composure,  a  composure 
like  to  nothing  else  but  the  stillness  of  eternity,  God 
sacrifices  that  nation  to  a  principle.  To  any  people 
who  are  identified  with  a  principle  in  God's  purposes, 
though  they  be  but  a  handful  of  slaves  under  the 
task-masters  of  the  Pharaohs,  the  language  of  Provi- 
dence is,  "  Fear  not ;  since  thou  wast  precious  in  my 
sight,  thou  hast  been  honorable,  and  I  have  loved 
thee ;  therefore  will  I  give  men  for  thee,  and  people 
for  thy  life." 

The  same  reach  of  truth  beyond  the  destiny  of  the 
individual,  is  shadowed  forth  in  certain  intimations  of 
biblical  writers  themselves,  that  their  teachings  must 
become  disturbing  forces  in  society.  A  celebrated 
English  scholar  says  that  the  idea  of  the  unnatural 
structure  of  the  social  life  of  England,  in  certain 
respects,  first  dawned  upon  his  mind  in  reading  the 
Epistle  of  James  and  the  prophets  of  the  Old  Testa- 


42  THE    RELATIONS    OP    THE    BIBLE 

ment.  The  commission  of  our  Lord  himself  to  his 
disciples,  affirms  as  distinctly  as  language  can,  that  the 
Gospel  they  were  to  preach  was  to  become  the  occasion 
of  social  disquietudes  and  collisions ;  and  more,  that 
it  was  to  advance  amidst  the  shock  of  battle,  by 
the  agency  of  suffering,  and  at  the  cost  of  life. 
"  Think  not  that  I  am  come  to  send  peace  on  earth," 
is  his  language,  "I  come  not  to  send  peace,  but  a 
sword." 

But  we  are  not  left  to  intimations  alone,  of  the  in- 
spired insight  into  the  working  of  religious  ideas  in 
social  institutions.  The  design  of  such  ideas  to  work 
thus,  is  seen  in  some  of  the  actual  uses  made  of  them 
by  inspiration  itself.  It  is  an  inexplicable  anomaly, 
that  honest  minds  can  read  certain  portions  of  the 
Scriptures  like  some  of  the  teachings  of  the  prophets, 
and  of  the  apostle  James,  and  yet  hold  the  scriptural 
policy  in  the  applications  of  the  Gospel  to  social 
and  political  abuses,  to  be  the  policy  of  silence  or  of 
reserve.  The  late  Dr.  Arnold,  of  Rugby,  who  perhaps 
more  than  any  other  man  of  our  times,  made  the  Scrip- 
tures his  study  with  reference  to  this  thing,  alludes  to  a 
recommendation  which  had  been  made  in  a  time  of 
national  commotion  in  England,  that  the  clergy  should 
preach  only  subordination  and  obedience.  "  I  seri- 
ously say,"  he  writes,  "  God  forbid  they  should ;  for 
if  any  earthly  thing  could  ruin  Christianity  in  Eng- 
land, it  would  be  this.  If  they  read  Isaiah  and  Jere- 
miah, and  Amos  and  Habbakuk,  they  will  find  that 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       43 

the  prophets,  in  a  similar  state  of  society  in  Judea, 
did  not  preach  subordination  only  or  chiefly ;  but  they 
denounced  oppression,  and  amassing  overgrown  prop- 
erties, and  grinding  the  laborers  to  the  smallest  pos- 
sible pittance :  and  they  denounced  the  Jewish  high 
church  party  for  countenancing  these  iniquities,  and 
prophesying  smooth  things?  "  * 

The  scriptural  principle  in  the  application  of  Chris- 
tianity to  social  wrong,  may  be  summed  up  in  this  — 
the  temporary  toleration  of  evil,  followed  by  timely 
efforts  for  its  extinction.  It  is  the  wisdom  of  the  Bible, 
as  of  Providence,  to  be  merciful  to  the  evil  and  the 
unthankful.  The  sufferance  of  wrong,  the  toleration 
of  sin  even,  it  endures,  so  long  as  the  national  con- 
science is  not  educated  to  distinct  cognizance  of  the 
sin.  "  I  have  many  things  to  say  unto  you,"  is  often 
its  sad  burden,  "but  ye  cannot  bear  them  now.' 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  wisdom  of  the  Bible,  as 
of  Providence,  is  to  endure  no  hiding  of  wrong,  and 
no  compromise  with  wrong,  seen  and  felt  to  be  wrong, 
by  the  national  mind.  "When  Christian  truth  has  so 
trained  a  people,  that  they  begin  to  rise  above  the  cor- 
ruption of  ages,  and  to  grow  into  capacity  to  catch 
some  glimmering  of  light  upon  a  national  distortion, 
then  the  prophets  and  apostles  of  Christianity  are  on 
the  alert,  quick  to  point  out  that  distortion  as  a  sin ; 
to  denounce  it  without  stint,  as  a  wrong  against  hu- 

*  Arnold's  Life  and  Correspondence,  American  Edition,  page  170. 


44  THE    RELATIONS    OP    THE    BIBLE 

manity,  and  a  crime  against  God.  Then  truth  becomes 
a  fire  and  a  hammer.  It  verifies,  by  its  working,  the 
saying  of  one  of  our  wise  men ;  that  "  when  God 
prepares  a  hammer  it  will  not  be  made  of  silk."  This 
is  the  genius  of  biblical  reform.  Large  portions  of 
the  Bible  are  alive  with  it.  Suspense  of  judgment 
upon  wrong,  I  repeat,  is  in  the  Scriptures,  as  it  is  in 
Providence,  only  so  far  as  it  is  mercy  to  the  weakness 
and  the  blindness  of  men.  It  exists  always  for  the 
sake  of  the  extinction  of  the  wrong;  never  for  its 
increase,  never  for  its  perpetuity,  never  for  the  con- 
venience of  letting  it  alone.  Inspiration  does  indeed 
practice  as  it  preaches  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent, 
but  always  in  conjunction  with  the  innocence  of  the 
dove. 

Perhaps  more  convincingly  than  in  any  other  form, 
the  diffusion  of  the  effects  of  Christianity  into  the 
social  economy,  is  seen  in  the  predictions  of  the  final 
triumph  of  the  gospel  by  the  conversion  of  the  world 
to  Christ.  It  is  impossible  to  look  attentively  Upon 
the  scriptural  picture  of  this  world  as  it  is  to  be  in  its 
latter  days,  without  catching  from  inspiration  an  as- 
surance that  those  are  to  be  days  of  great  intellectual, 
and  social,  and  civil,  and  political,  as  well  as  of  moral 
elevation.  They  are  to  be  days  of  peace  among  the 
nations :  swords  shall  become  ploughshares,  and  spears 
pruning  hooks.  They  shall  be  clays  of  the  supremacy 
of  right  over  wrong  in  the  government  of  states.  "  I 
will  make  thy  officers  peace,  and  thine  exactors  right- 


TO    TUE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       45 

eousness: "  "nations  shall  say,  'come,  let  ns  go  np  to 
the  mountain  of  the  Lord,  and  he  will  teach  us  of  his 
ways,  and  wc  will  walk  in  his  paths.' "  They  shall 
be  days  in  which  the  great  powers  of  the  world  shall 
acknowledge  the  dominion  of  Christ.  "  All  kings 
shall  fall  down  before  him."  It  shall  be  an  era  of 
intellectual  advancement.  "  Wisdom  and  knowledge 
shall  be  the  stability  of  thy  times."  *  They  shall  be 
times  marked  by  revolutions  of  false  public  opinion. 
"  In  that  day  shall  the  deaf  hear  the  words  of  the 
book,  and  the  eyes  of  the  blind  shall  see  out  of  ob- 
scurity :  they  also  that  erred  in  spirit  shall  come  to 
understanding."  Those  days  shall  witness  signal  ad- 
vances upon  preceding  states  of  society.  "  For  brass 
I  will  bring  gold,  and  for  iron  silver,  and  for  wood 
brass,  and  for  stones  iron."  The  natural  obstacles  to 
progress  shall  be  removed.  "  Every  valley  shall  be 
exalted,  and  every  mountain  and  hill  shall  be  made 
low,  and  the  crooked  shall  be  made  straight,  and  the 
rough  places  plain."  Changes  so  marvellous  shall 
occur  in  the  relations  of  conflicting  races,  that  they 
shall  seem  like  a  reversal  of  the  laws  of  nature.  "  The 
wolf  and  the  lamb  shall  feed  together;    the  leopard 

*Thc  elder  President  Edwards,  in  lii.s  History  of  Redemption,  speaking 
of  the  ultimate  prevalence  of  knowledge  in  the  earth,  observes:  "  It  may 
be  hoped  that  then  many  of  the  Negroes  and  Indians  will  he  divines ; 
and  that  excellent  books  will  be  published  in  Africa,  in  Ethiopia,  in  Tar- 
tary,  and  other  now  the  most  barbarous  countries ;  and  not  only  learned 
men,  but  others  of  more  ordinary  education,  shall  then  be  very  knowing 
in  religion.  Knowledge  shall  then  be  very  universal  among  all  sorts  of 
persons."  —  Works  in  four  Volumes,  vol.  i.,  page  481. 


46  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

shall  lie  down  with  the  kid ;  the  calf  and  the  young 
lion  and  the  fattling  together."  Is  it  possible  not  to 
believe  that  slavery  will  cease  in  those  days  1  "  They 
shall  sit,  every  man  under  his  vine  and  under  his  fig- 
tree,  and  none  shall  make  them  afraid."  "  The  lofti- 
ness of  man  shall  be  bowed  down,  and  the  haughti- 
ness of  men  shall  be  made  low."  "  Sorrow  and  sighing 
shall  flee  away."  "  The  voice  of  weeping  shall  no 
more  be  heard,  nor  the  voice  of  crying."  "  My  people 
shall  dwell  in  a  peaceable  habitation,  and  in  sure 
dwellings,  and  in  quiet  resting-places."  "  Neither  shall 
they  defile  themselves  any  more  with  their  detestable 
things,  nor  with  any  of  their  transgressions." 

In  no  deformed,  degraded,  brutalized  types  of 
humanity  then,  but  in  the  noblest  and  most  pure,  are 
the  nations  to  be  given  to  Christ  for  His  inheritance. 
He  shall  see,  —  He  whose  ideal  is  his  own  pure  con- 
sciousness of  what  manhood  can  be,  —  He  shall  see  of 
the  travail  of  His  soul,  and  shall  be  satisfied. 

Starting  thus  with  the  idea  of  the  moral  regenera- 
tion of  the  individual,  the  word  of  God  conducts  us, 
by  easy  and  inevitable  advances,  to  that  truth  which 
becomes  its  own  witness  to  a  Christian  believer,  that 
the  civilization  of  the  future,  and  the  triumph 
of  Christianity,  are  identical. 

This  faith  was  the  wisdom  of  our  fathers,  in  laying 
the  foundations  of  New  England.  Theirs  was  a  hidden 
wisdom,  which  none  of  the  princes  of  this  world  knew. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       47 

Their  ideal  of  a  perfect  body  politic,  was  simply  that 
of  a  Christian  State.  Just  two  hundred  years  ago,  in 
the  Election  Sermon  of  the  year  preached,  by  Rev. 
John  Norton,  the  preacher  declared,  "  That  our  polity 
may  be  compleat  according  to  the  Scriptures  —  this  is 
the  very  work  we  engaged  for  into  this  wilderness. 
This  is  the  scope  and  end  of  it,  that  which  is  written 
upon  the  forehead  of  New  England."  *  "  God  be 
thanked,"  said  the  fervid  pastor  of  the  West  Church 
of  Boston,  "  one  may  speak  freely  .  .  .  both  of 
government  and  religion,  and  even  give  some  broad 
hints  that  he  is  engaged  on  the  side  of  liberty,  the 
Bible,  and  common  sense  .  .  .  without  danger 
of  the  Bastile  or  the  Inquisition."  j*  "  Liberty,  the 
Bible,  and  Common  Sense  !  "  Thus  our  wise  fathers 
uttered  "  broad  hints "  of  the  alliance  of  the  great 
ideas  on  which  their  institutions  should  be  built. 

And  we  are  here  to-day,  for  what  purpose  more 
becoming,  than  to  read  anew  that  writing  on  the  fore- 
head of  New  England,  and  interpret  it  to  our  children  X 
Surely,  never  in  our  history  has  it  been  more  timely. 
I  should  be  unworthy  to  stand  in  this  presence, 
within  these  walls  from  which  echo  so  many  voices 
of  the  past,  beneath  the  cloud  of  witnesses  who  have 
hallowed  this  anniversary  by  their  faithfulness,  and  at 

*  Thornton's  "  Pulpit  of  the  American  Revolution,"  page  18. 

fPatre  2  of  Preface  to  Mayhcw's  Sermon  on  the  Anniversary  of  the 
Death  of  Charles  I.,  "  preached  the  Lord's  Day  after  the  30th  of  Janu- 
ary, 1749-50." 


48  THE    RELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

such'  an  hour  as  this  in  the  evolution  of  our  country's 
destiny,  if  I  should  refuse  to  accept  the  application  of 
the  suhject  we  have  considered,  to  the  rights  and  the 
duties  of  the  hour. 

The  details  of  the  crisis  which  is  upon  us,  need  not 
be  rehearsed  here.  They  have  been  borne  through 
the  land  as  by  the  winds.  Have  they  not  seemed  at 
times  to  press  down  the  atmosphere  to  an  unnatural 
stillness,  as  if  the  breath  of  a  nation  were  stifled  by 
them  %  Yet  who  knows  whether  or  not  it  has  been 
the  hush  which  precedes  the  earthquake'?  This  is 
one  of  those  epochs,  not  infrequent  in  the  history  of 
great  nations,  at  which  God  summons  them  to  fall 
back  upon  the  principles  on  which  their  greatness  is 
built,  and  from  that  point  look  the  future  in  the  eye. 
We  need  to  lift  up  the  questions  of  the  hour,  above 
the  strifes  of  parties,  above  the  frivolities  of  politics, 
above  the  interests  of  trade,  above  the  temptations  of 
ease,  and  listen  for  the  responses  of  God's  word,  with 
faith  in  them  as  oracles  of  the  future.  We  need  to 
weigh  events  and  their  probable  results,  in  the  spirit 
which  subdued  many  of  the  founders  of  this  republic 
to  prayer.  Said  John  Adams  in  1776 :  "  When  I  con- 
sider the  great  events  which  are  passed,  and  those 
greater  which  are  rapidly  advancing,  and  that  I  may 
have  been  instrumental  in  touching  some  springs,  and 
turning  some  small  wheels  which  have  had  and  will 
have  such  effects,  I  feel  an  awe  upon  my  mind  which 
is  not  easily  described."     "  In  such  great  changes  and 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       49 

commotions,  individuals  arc  but  atoms.  It  is  scarcely 
worth  while  to  consider  what  the  consequences  will 
be  to  us.  What  will  be  the  effects  upon  present  and 
future  millions,  and  millions  of  millions  is  [the] 
question."  *  The  clear  head  and  the  great  heart  of 
a  Christian  statesman  spoke  in  those  words. 

Approaching  the  duties  of  our  time  in  such  a  spirit, 
we  shall  ensure  the  prime  virtues  of  Christian  citi- 
zenship and  Christian  legislation.  We  shall,  in  the 
first  place,  act  in  the  spirit  of  obedience  to  constitu- 
tional law.  We  have  been  told,  by  men  whom  it  has 
been  an  honor  to  us  to  respect  as  our  judicial  counsel- 
lors, that  we  have  enactments  on  our  statute-book, 
inconsistent  with  the  compact  which  binds  us  to  the 
sister  States  of  the  Confederacy.  If  this  be  so,  those 
enactments  will  be  repealed.  It  will  be  seen  that 
Massachusetts  knows  how  to  do  her  duty,  as  well  as 
to  claim  her  rights.  She  will  indeed  judge  leniently 
of  the  passage  of  such  laws,  for  the  genius  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  the  judgment  of  the  Christian  world  have 
taught  her  in  the  language  of  Burke,  to  "pardon 
much  to  the  spirit  of  liberty."  But  she  will  repeal 
those  laws,  in  the  faith  that  liberty  can  always  afford 
to  be  just:  and  its  doom  is  inevitable  if  it  is  built  on 
a  wrong.  It  is  never  pusillanimous  to  do  right.  As 
there  is  always  a  spot  of  soft  cowardice  in  the  heart 

*  Life  and  Works  of  John  Adams,  vol.  i.,  pages  219,  199. 
7 


50  THE    EELATIONS    OF    THE    BIBLE 

of  a  duellist,  so  is  there  in  the  heart  of  a  great  people, 
who  dare  not  retract  an  error,  through  fear  of  seeming 
to  fear  a  threat.  But  why  do  I  speak  thus  I  A  Mas- 
sachusetts Legislature  never  yet  betrayed  the  childish- 
ness of  refusing  to  hear  reason.  They  are  wont, 
indeed,  to  be  convinced  before  they  act,  but  once 
convinced,  they  need  no  exhortation  from  the  pulpit 
or  the  bench  on  such  a  theme  as  this,  to  do  their 
duty. 

Acting  thus  in  the  spirit  of  Christian  statesman- 
ship, we  shall  cherish,  also,  magnanimity  towards  our 
misguided  brethren.  This  is  no  time  to  taunt  them 
with  their  misfortunes ;  it  is  no  time  to  upbraid  them 
with  their  misdeeds.  In  so  grave  a  crisis,  the  triumph 
of  a  party  is  unseemly.  If  the  dying  prayer  of  Christ 
could  ever  be  offered  for  states  deluded  to  the  brink 
of  their  own  destruction,  it  is  becoming  now  for  our 
brethren  of  the  South.  They  surely  know  not  what 
they  do.  They  misinterpret  the  word  and  the  Provi- 
dence of  God.  They  do  not  hear  aright  the  voices  of 
the  future.  They  are  deceived  respecting  our  position 
in  controversy  with  them.  Their  press  is  teeming 
with  falsehoods  from  northern  pens.  Up  to  the 
limit  of  national  safety,  then,  we  have  reason  for 
forbearance.  Let  the  tone  of  our  legislation,  and  our 
press,  and  our  pulpits,  be  generous,  until  so  gentle  a 
virtue  is  silenced  by  events.  If  we  can  yet  be  heard  in 
debate,  let  it  be  in  words  of  temperance  and  soberness. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       51 

Let  us  speak  at  the  height  of  great  argum  <  j 
becoming  to  Christian  states  in  the  discussion  of  great 
principles.  If  we  need  a  less  exalted  motive,  let  us 
remember  that  we  can  afford  to  be  magnanimous. 
For,  though,  if  our  brethren  suffer,  we  must  suffer 
with  them,  yet  what  thoughtful  man  is  not  appalled 
at  the  imagination  of  the  contrast  between  their  lot 
and  ours  in  the  last  extremity  \  If  there  is  any  truth 
in  history,  if  the  faith  of  our  fathers  has  not  been 
mocking  us  these  two  hundred  years,  if  'liberty'  is  not 

"  A  hollow  word, 
As  if  a  dead  man  spake  it," 

then  surely  the  Future  is  ours.  No,  I  will  not  say 
1  ours,'  except  as,  through  our  Christian  faith,  "  all 
things  are  ours,  whether  things  present  or  things  to 
come." 

Yet  not  this  virtue  of  forbearance,  as  I  con- 
ceive, is  the  chief  of  '  the  graces '  demanded  of  us  in 
the  present  exigency.  Regarding  the  requirements 
of  the  time  in  the  light  of  a  Christian  civilization,  we 
have  need  to  gird  up  our  fidelity  to  the  principles  of 
Freedom.  Here  lies  our  chief  duty,  and  our  chief 
peril.  It  is  useless  to  blink  the  fact  of  the  radical 
antagonism  of  elements  under  the  cover  of  our 
national  constitution.  Two  opposing  types  of  civili- 
zation are  in  conflict  here,  and  have  been  from  the 
infancy  of  our  Union.  The  conflict  is  not  one  of 
physical  resources,  but  of  ideas.     The  strifes  of  polit- 


52  THE    RELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

ical  parties  have  been,  as  they  often  are  in  the  history 
of  great  nations,  ripples  on  the  surface  of  affairs. 
Underneath,  a  drifting  of  the  social  forces  has  been 
going  on,  under  laws  of  Providence,  as  inevitable  in 
their  operations  as  oceanic  currents.  It  has  been 
bearing  the  whole  body  politic  on  towards  the  solu- 
tion of  the  African  problem  in  the  civilization  of  this 
continent.  Not  chiefly  is  it  for  the  sake  of  the 
African  race ;  it  is  for  the  sake  of  the  principles 
of  civilization  which  that  problem  involves.  The 
statesmen  of  England  now  very  clearly  see  that  the 
American  Revolution  was  the  salvation  of  the  lib- 
erties of  Great  Britain,  and  if  of  her  liberties,  then 
of  all  else  that  is  valuable  in  her  institutions.  So 
the  freedom,  and  if  the  freedom,  the  happiness,  and 
the  culture,  and  the  character  of  every  man,  woman, 
child,  of  the  future  generations  of  America,  swing 
on  the  pivot  of  the  African  question  of  to-day.  This 
is  no  chimera.  It  is  an  illustration  of  one  of  the 
methods  of  Providence  in  the  probation  of  nations. 
God  tries  nations  by  the  conflict  of  ideas,  brought 
into  conflict  in  the  exigencies  of  national  life.  Ideas 
of  truth  and  ideas  of  error  are  set  afloat,  and  so 
long  as  they  float  in  theories  only,  they  move  peace- 
ably, because  they  move  asunder.  Outside  of  books, 
the  world  hears  very  little  about  them.  But 
by  and  by  there  comes  a  great  practical  exigency, 
involving  the  right  and  wrong  of  those  ideas,   and 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.       53 

the  nation  drifts  into  it  like  a  ship  drifting  in  a  gale 
into  an  icefloe,  in  which  her  safety  depends,  under 
God,  on  the  strength  of  her  timbers,  the  discipline 
of  her  crew,  and  the  nerve  of  her  pilot.  Who  cares 
for  the  icefloe,  as  a  thing  of  dispute  between  the 
North  Pole  and  the  Equator,  provided  the  freight 
of  human  life  can  get  safely  into  port?  So  it  is 
with  these  national  exigencies.  As  involving  the 
questions  of  sectional  rivalry,  they  are  petty.  An 
earnest  man  will  not  look  at  them.  But  as  tests 
of  conflicting  ideas  of  civilization,  an  earnest  man 
cannot  help  looking  at  them.  The  nation's  future 
dates  from  them.  A  nation's  capacity  for  every  thing 
that  a  great  people  should  aspire  to,  is  cither 
expanded  or  contracted  by  them.  Not  a  thing,  not 
a  thought,  which  a  wise,  free  people  ever  fought  for, 
or  a  Christian  people  ever  prayed  for,  is  outside 
of  the  bearings  of  such  crises.  The  trial  by  jury, 
the  freedom  of  the  press,  the  rights  of  commerce, 
the  sacredness  of  constitutions,  the  interests  of  learn- 
ing, the  integrity  of  the  pulpit,  a  free  Bible,  free 
worship,  free  homes — every  thing,  in  short,  around 
which  the  battles  of  Christian  liberty  have  surged 
in  the  past,  is  put  to  the  hazard  in  such  emergen- 
cies ;  and  the  privilege  of  a  people  to  have  these 
blessings  is  made  to  hinge  upon  their  will  to  keep 
them,  by  contending  for  the  ideas  which  gave  them 
birth. 


51  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE     BIBLE 

National  progress  and  national  decline  go  on  visibly 
from  exigence  to  exigence ;  not  by  quiet  and  easy 
gradations,  in  which  there  is  no  trial  of  a  people's 
faith  in  truth  and  in  God.  The  immediate  occasion 
of  such  conflicts  of  ideas  may  be  insignificant.  The 
abduction  of  a  Jew  boy  may  seem  to  convulse  a 
continent ;  so  may  a  tax  of  three  pence  on  a  pound 
of  tea.  Be  the  occasion  what  it  may,  when  such 
a  conflict  comes,  it  is  neither  statesmanship  nor 
manliness  to  evade  it  by  the  sacrifice  of  a  principle, 
or  the  surrender  of  a  right.  Compromise  of  things 
not  vital  may,  and  may  not,  be  expedient,  but  beyond 
that,  '  compromise '  is  a  perilous  word  with  which  to 
familiarize  the  lips  of  a  free  people.  It  should  be  met 
as  the  wary  citizens  of  Boston  met  the  insidious 
propositions  of  Bernard,  by  which  he  attempted  to 
beguile  them  into  an  acceptance  of  the  Stamp  Act. 
"  There  is  a  snake  in  the  grass,"  said  they ;  "  we 
choose  Samuel  Adams  to  speak  our  minds." 

Just  this,  then,  I  must  believe,  is  the  mission 
of  New  England  at  the  present  juncture  of  our 
affairs ;  it  is  to  stand  with  temperate,  but  firm  resolve, 
by  the  hereditary  ideas  of  liberty,  which  have  become 
historic  among  us,  and  which,  under  the  good  Provi- 
dence of  God,  have  made  New  England  what  she 
is.  "We  owe  this  to  the  future  of  the  South,  no  less 
than  to  our  own.  When  such  perils  to  freedom 
are  darkening  the  air,  we  can  see  no  points  of  com- 
pass.    The  blackness  falls  on  the  whole  land. 


TO    THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE. 

From  the  origin  of  our  government,  the  influence 
of  New  England  has  been  pre-eminently  the  influence 
of  her  moral  ideas.  These  have  given  the  purchase 
to  the  lever,  with  which  she  has  borne  her  share 
of  the  lift  in  national  affairs.  "We  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  ground  our  own  liberties  on  principles 
of  right — never  on  devices  of  expediency.  We  have 
claimed  those  liberties ;  never,  at  any  human  tribu- 
nal, have  we  asked  for  them.  On  the  same  principle, 
we  have  advocated  the  liberties  of  other  men.  Our 
pulpits,  our  bar,  our  press,  our  platforms,  our  halls 
of  legislation,  our  seminaries  of  learning,  have  spoken 
our  love  of  liberty  everywhere  for  all  men,  as  a 
right  founded  on  the  laws  of  God.  Our  notions  of 
freedom  and  of  conscience  have  thus  been  welded 
together  in  our  history.  "  Is  it  right,"  inquired  James 
Otis,  "  to  enslave  a  man  because  his  color  is  black,  or 
his  hair  short  and  curled  like  wool,  instead  of 
Christian  hair  1 "  And  that  has  been  the  blunt 
question  of  New  England  from  that  clay  to  this.  We 
have  no  novel  ideas  of  liberty.  We  have  no  imprac- 
ticable theories.  We  stand,  on  this  subject,  where  ice 
were  born.  We  have  proved  the  practicability  of 
our  theory  by  the  working  of  our  own  institutions. 
The  world  knows  this.  The  world  knows,  too, 
that,  as  a  people,  we  have  not  been  accustomed 
to  compromise  our  views  of  right  for  the  sake 
of  our  material  interests.  God  forbid  that  Ave 
should  do  it   now !     Two  hundred  and   forty  years 


56  THE    RELATIONS    OF    THE     BIBLE 

ago,  our  fathers  buried  the  thought  of  such  com- 
promise as  that;  and  generations  have  tramped  over 
its  grave.  It  is  not  for  us  to  call  the  dead  thing  to 
life  again. 

But,  in  giving  an  irrevocable  negative  to  such 
dishonor,  it  becomes  us  to  count  the  heaviest  cost. 
No  man  can  foresee  the  immediate  issue  of  our 
affairs.  We  are  advancing  in  the  dark.  "We  are  all 
sensible  of  this.  It  would  be  folly  to  predict  the 
intelligence  of  to-morrow's  telegraph.  But  it  is  not 
the  usual  way  of  Divine  Providence,  in  the  treatment 
of  gigantic  evils,  which  block  up  the  course  of 
Christian  ideas,  and  are  organized  in  social  insti- 
tutions, to  bring  them  to  an  end  by  bloodless  revolu- 
tions alone.  They  do  not  commonly  die  of  sheer 
old  age,  and  go  out  of  sight  tranquilly.  The  decisive 
conflict  of  a  Christian  civilization  with  them  may  be 
deferred,  but,  sooner  or  later,  it  must  come ;  and 
whenever  it  comes,  they  are  apt  to  die  as  they  have 
lived, — by  violence.  If  this  should  be  the  result  of  the 
conflict  with  slavery  in  this  country,  we  or  our 
children  must  suffer  from  the  shock.  Be  it  so.  Every 
man  of  us  should  be  prepared  for  this.  Possibly  God 
will  avert  it  from  us,  but  what  wise  man  can  expect 
such  a  result,  or  teach  his  children  to  expect  it? 

There  are  men,  indeed,  who  tell  us  that  the  brunt 
of  the  shock  will  fall  first  and  last,  and  heaviest,  on 
New  England.  We  have  too  much  faith  in  gravita- 
tion to  believe  that ;  but  be  it  even  so.     It  will  not 


TO     THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE     FUTURE.        57 

be  the  first  time  that  Right  has  seemed  to  be  worsted 
in  the  battle.  We  must  be  prepared  to  stand  in  our 
lot,  whenever  and  however,  the  trial  of  our  free  insti- 
tutions shall  come  upon  us.  For  these  we  must  be 
content  to  go  back  to  the  times  of  "  plain  living  and 
high  thinking."  The  WQrld  should  know  that  these 
institutions  are,  at  all  hazards,  to  be  protected.  It 
shall  be  done  without  bravado,  but  it  shall  be  done 
without  compromise,  and  without  restriction. 

They  are  to  be  defended  by  the  majesty  of  law,  by 
the  culture  of  the  schools,  by  the  instructions  of  the 
pulpit,  by  the  persuasions  of  the  press,  by  the  wisdom 
of  the  bench,  by  the  eloquence  of  the  platform, 
and  the  bar,  and  the  senate,  by  free  thought  and  free 
speech  in  our  streets,  and  in  our  homes,  and  if  need 
be,  by  the  sacrifice  of  fortunes,  and  by  the  best  blood 
we  have  inherited  from  men  who  reckoned  not  their 
blood  too  dear  a  price  of  the  institutions  which  they 
would  give  to  their  children. 

Prepared  thus  to  do  and  to  suffer,  we  may  trustfully 
commit  the  future  of  this  nation  to  God  in  prayer. 
Prayer  will  save  this  country,  when  it  has  gone 
beyond  the  reach  of  legislation.  We  may  cast  it 
into  the  infinity  of  the  plans  of  God,  with  repose. 

"  As  a  child  drops  some  pebble  small 
Down  a  deep  well,  and  hears  it  fall, 
Smilinjr," 


58  THE    RELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

so  we  may  entrust  the  destiny  of  this  people  to  the 
depths  of  His  Will.  "  If  thou  seest,"  is  His  language 
to  us,  "if  thou  seeest  the  oppression  of  the  poor, 
and  violent  perverting  of  judgment  and  justice,  in  a 
province,  marvel  not  at  the  matter:  for  He  that  is 
higher  than  the  highest  regardeth." 

The  events  of  the  last  month  have  forced  back  our 
thoughts  to  the  great  men  who  have  left  us.  We 
have  said,  "  Would  that  they  were  with  us  now  !  "  I 
have  been  reminded  of  Wordsworth's  apostrophe  to 
Milton,  in  one  of  England's  dark  hours  during  the 
French  Revolution :  — 

"  Milton  I     Thou  shouldst  be  living  at  this  hour. 
England  hath  need  of  thee." 

So  have  we  said  of  this  one,  and  of  that  one,  of  the 
men  whom  we  venerate  in  our  country's  history. 
Eternity  only  can  disclose  the  volume  of  prayer 
which,  in  these  few  weeks,  has  gone  up  from  this 
land  to  the  God  of  nations,  in  the  petition  of  the 
Hebrew  lawgiver,  "  Let  the  Lord,  the  God  of  the 
spirits  of  all  flesh,  set  a  man  over  [this  people]  that 
[they]  be  not  as  sheep,  which  have  no  shepherd." 

Yet,  we  have  taken  courage,  when  we  have  looked 
around  us,  and  numbered  the  men  whom  the  God  of 
our  fathers  has  given  us,  in  whom  the  manhood  of 
the  fathers  still  lives.  Do  I  not  speak  the  minds  of 
the  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  in  recognizing  as  emi- 


TO     THE    CIVILIZATION    OF    THE    FUTURE.        59 

nent  among  such  men  the  retiring  chief  magistrate  of 
the  Commonwealth  \ 

I  am  sure,  Sir,  that  I  do  not  exaggerate  the  feelings 
of  the  good  and  true  men  among  us,  in  expressing 
their  gratitude  to  the  good  Providence  of  God,  for 
raising  you  to  offices  of  trust  in  the  midst  of  them. 
He  has  permitted  us  to  honor  you  as  one  of  the  crea- 
tions of  the  ancient  institutions  of  New  England. 
When  those  institutions  have  been  reviled,  He  has 
made  it  our  privilege  to  respond  silently,  pointing  to 
the  life  and  character  and  administration  of  the  Ex- 
ecutive at  our  State  Capitol.  Our  young  men  have 
been  stimulated  to  achievement  by  your  history ;  our 
old  men  have  been  cheered  by  it,  as  being  in  some  sort 
a  proof  of  the  fidelity  of  their  generation. 

We  count  it  as  a  blessing  of  God  upon  us,  that  He 
has  put  it  into  your  heart  to  appreciate  our  semina- 
ries of  learning  of  every  rank.  We  bear  you  witness 
that  your  care  for  them  has  been  large-hearted  and 
impartial.  There  are  youth  now  in  a  course  of  train- 
ing in  them  who  will  speak  to  their  children,  of  the 
first  awakening  of  high  aims  in  their  souls  by  words 
which  have  fallen  from  your  lips. 

The  churches  and  the  clergy  of  the  State  have 
numbered  it  among  the  mercies  of  Providence  to  this 
Commonwealth,  that  you  -have  been  a  friend  of  good 
order,  of  liberty,  and  of  sound  morals,  and  that  they 
have  never  feared  to  see  you  sitting  in  the  seat  of  the 


60  THE    RELATIONS     OF    THE    BIBLE 

scomer.     You  do  not  need  our  praise  for  these  things, 
but  we  thank  God,  on  your  behalf  and  ours. 

New  England  has  long  been  accustomed  to  give  up 
the  choicest  of  her  sons  to  more  youthful  States.  Of 
such  sacrifices  Massachusetts  has  borne  her  full  share. 
Now  that  she  adds  another  to  the  number,  may  I 
venture  to  tell  you  that  she  feels  a  joy  for  your  sake, 
that  you  go,  as  we  have  been  told,  to  discharge  a  duty 
to  those  who  are  dependent  on  your  private  fortunes. 
We  rejoice  in  it,  as  a  proof  to  the  world  of  that  which 
we  all  knew  before — which  would  once  have  indicated 
too  common  a  virtue  to  be  spoken  of,  but  a  virtue 
which,  in  these  latter  days  is  beginning  to  reflect 
signal  honor  on  a  public  man — that  the  Governors  of 
Massachusetts  do  not  understand  the  meaning  of  the 
"  spoils  of  office." 

We  give  you,  Sir,  to  the  State  of  your  adoption — 
not  unwillingly ;  for  we  know  where  the  destinies  of 
this  nation  are  to  be  decided,  and  there,  we  believe, 
you  are  needed.  But  I  am  assured  that  I  speak  the 
voice  of  this  people  when  I  say,  that  the  heart  of 
Massachusetts  goes  with  you.  She  trusts  you  to 
represent  her  honorably  there,  as  you  have  done  here. 

To  His  Honor,  the  Lieutenant  Governor,  and  to 
the  Honorable  Council,  and  to  you  all,  Gentlemen  of 
the  Legislature,  permit  me  to  extend  the  salutations 
of  the  hour — salutations  subdued  by  awe  at  the  gran- 
deur of  public  duty  in  times   like  these.      We  are 


TO    THE     CIVILIZATION     OP    THE     FUTURE.      61 

approaching  a  great  epoch,  if  true  men  are  found 
with  wisdom  and  grace  to  make  it  great.  In  you, 
Massachusetts  expects  to  find  such  men.  She  trusts 
you  as  the  guardians  of  her  honor.  She  makes  you, 
for  the  time,  the  representatives  of  her  conscience. 
She  believes  that  you  will  come  up  to  the  level  of 
Christian  legislation  ;  and  that  whatever  else  you  part 
with,  you  will  cling  to  her  ancestral  fame,  as  a  State 
fearing  God,  obeying  Law,  "daring  to  feel  the  majesty 
of  Right,"  and  loving  the  liberties  of  mankind. 


\J 


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